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Comment by franga2000 | Hacker News Reader

franga2000

The quote is calling the statement "the vaccine will stop the spread of covid" a lie. That statement can be a lie only if the vaccine can not stop the spread. An overly optimistic prediction wouldn't be a lie, so the quote must be calling the vaccine ineffective at best.

Regardless of whether the pandemic is over or not, the statement isn't a lie and therefore the quote is incorrect. The vaccine significantly slows ths spread and from both theory and past experience can fully stop it, given a high enough vaccination rate. At best it hasn't come to fruition yet and at worst it won't not because the statement is a lie but because people actively prevented it from coming true, despite all reason and logic.

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If this is the standard that we go by, are other lyricists literally commanding me to rob banks and abuse women?

Are you saying that this artist is just playing a character? Maybe in reality they really are a Biden supporter? I guess that wouldn't be surprising.

No, which is why I don't support the takedown. You can point out a bad argument from someone without agreeing with the other side.

> The vaccine significantly slows ths spread

Based on what data do you come to that conclusion?

The vaccination rate of a country is not correlated with its covid infection rate:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

And after 3 months of being fully vaccinated, people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y

From the article:

> Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus.

Thank you for the links. I followed them and came to a different conclusion:

1) "The vaccination rate of a country is not correlated with its covid infection rate". From the article: "The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated." You can interpret this as either the vaccine not working (unlikely) or that high-income countries such as Iceland and Portugal test a larger share of their population than low-income countries such as Vietnam and South Africa (very likely), thus confounding the relationship between vaccination levels and reported Covid cases.

2) "And after 3 months of being fully vaccinated, people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people". From the article: "The risk of spreading the Delta infection soon after vaccination with that jab [Pfizer] was 42%, but increased to 58% with time." Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine.

"Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine."

The word "significantly" has a specific statistical meaning. The paper discussed on the Nature article implies it is not a statistically significant difference between 67% and 58% (likely accounting for covariance and measurement error).

Unless you have a different source showing there is statistical significance between those two results?

> You can interpret this as either the vaccine not working (unlikely) or that high-income countries such as Iceland and Portugal test a larger share of their population than low-income countries such as Vietnam and South Africa (very likely)

You may interpret all you want, but I was just pointing out the lack of solid data supporting the claim: "The vaccine significantly slows the spread"

Almost 3 billion people have been fully vaccinated worldwide and yet there is still no evidence that the vaccines have any effect at all in slowing the spread of the virus. I find this rather remarkable.

This situation could very well push the evolution of the virus towards more dangerous strains. Like what happened with Marek's disease among chickens:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathog...

> Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine.

Pfizer buys you a bit more time, but the downward trend in your immunity is unmistakable too:

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/coronavirus/1626980447-vaccin...

https://imgur.com/zt0wrOo

https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/vaccine-efficacy-safet...

Too many confounding variables. As vaccines increase immunity, protective measures such as mask wearing and social distancing and travel restrictions are dropped, increasing spread. There’s also the inverse effect where increased spread leads to higher vaccination rates.

Across different countries the testing methodologies are too different to meaningfully compare with.

Finally your last paragraph only applies if the vaccinated person gets infected with delta in the first place (in other words has a breakthrough infection).

95% of COVID-19 deaths are happening among the unvaccinated right now, you’re spreading FUD about what’s basically a miracle.

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